Hidden Orchestra join Minority Records

Hidden Orchestra join Minority Records

Prague-based indie games company Amanita Design released their new puzzle adventure Creaks this summer. This time they enlisted the help of Joe Acheson (aka Hidden Orchestra) to create the soundtrack, following in the footsteps of the duo DVA and Joe’s long-time friend and collaborator Tomáš Dvořák (Floex). For Joe this was a new challenge, which he was able to meet with an outsider’s perspective on the gaming music tradition, as a non-gamer doing his first soundtrack. In this brain-teasing game, players may have to restart levels several times, and the duration of each level depends on each player’s speed at finding the solutions. In order to avoid listener fatigue caused by constantly restarting and looping pieces of music, Joe decided to create an endless ‘living soundtrack’, using software primarily designed for sound effects and atmospheres. By creating numerous variations for every part played by every instrument, and choosing between them using randomised conditional logic, the game’s music is self-generating and infinite, with constantly varying arrangements - while each piece is clearly recognisable, it will never sound exactly the same twice.
The player’s progress through the game also controls the structure of the music, as each piece moves through its sections as the stages of each puzzle are solved. Joe also wanted to reflect Amanita’s trademark marriage of beautiful hand-drawn artwork with technology, which fits neatly with his own approach of using only real instruments and musicians, but treating them with production techniques from sample-based music in order to create an imaginary orchestra.
"Each of the characters in the game is represented by a different instrument – for example, a selection of different zithers for the main hero character. The genres of music in the game reflect the progression through time in the game's artwork" reveals Joe Acheson himself. The musical mosaic on Creaks is very diverse and offers a broad creative spread, which bears the recognisable handwriting of Hidden Orchestra. It offers a kaleidoscope from minimalist improvisations for solo piano, through more diverse orchestrations for winds and strings, to conceptual compositions driven in an electronic background. "We start in a primitive world, where the music is mostly created from simple ancient styles of instruments (zithers, flutes, percussion) and some home-made instruments (tunable chimes made from a deconstructed glockenspiel, a harp made from an egg-slicer). Then we go into a gothic/baroque world, filled with bells, organs and choirs. Then a Classical world, dominated by pianos and strings, and an Electronic world filled with textures, rhythms, bass lines and melodies created on a modular synth, finally ending up in a futuristic dark magical world full of bass clarinet”.
Whilst playing the majority of instruments on the record himself (including piano, basses, zithers, analog synth, flutes, percussion, harmonium and many more), Joe most prominently features the newest members of Hidden Orchestra on this release - Jack McNeill (clarinet, bass clarinet) and Rebecca Knight (cello) - and did not hesitate to enlist his traditional collaborators Tim Lane and Jamie Graham (drums) and Poppy Ackroyd (violin), with brief cameo appearances from Yvo Ackroyd Acheson (shakers), Ali Tocher (bells, zither-box percussion), Su-a Lee (cello), Phil Cardwell (trumpet), and the aforementioned Tomáš Dvořák (clarinet).

Creaks Soundtrack is the fourth full-length studio album from Hidden Orchestra, following Night Walks (2010), Archipelago (2012), and Dawn Chorus (2017). Other notable releases include Reorchestrations (2015), a collection of Joe’s reworkings of mainly classical and folk musicians, 2016’s Wingbeats EP, and several volumes of remixes of Hidden Orchestra material by an extremely diverse array of artists. The powerful and virtuosic live show has toured dozens of countries over the last decade, performing hundreds of shows with a fluctuating lineup of guest players and arresting live visuals.

Gianni Gebbia makes his debut on Minority Records with the album Sleep

Gianni Gebbia makes his debut on Minority Records with the album Sleep

Italian saxophone, cornettophone, and bansuri flute player Gianni Gebbia makes his debut on Minority Records with Sleep, released on LP and Bandcamp on May 1, 2026, the same day that marks the artist's 65th birthday.

Sleep can be considered an introspective and ambient meditative work, whose structure does not correspond to traditional jazz compositions, but rather consists of extensive improvised hypnotic soundscapes without precise boundaries, using soprano saxophone and cornettophone with electronic textures. Just as the Renaissance cornetto was an instrument full of symbolism, representing life, death, and eternity, where the eight carved edges of the instrument represent the unbroken line of eternity and infinity, a similar prism can be used to view the free structure of the work without a clear ending. Sleep is therefore more of an auditory meditation exploring the space of sound, the gradual evolution of motifs, and the atmosphere of dreaming through Gebbia's improvisational playing.

Gianni Gebbia, born in Palermo, Sicily, and a graduate of the University of Palermo's Faculty of Philosophy, is an internationally renowned Italian saxophonist, flutist, and composer, known for his experimental and avant-garde jazz style. Gebbia is considered one of the world's leading specialists in circular breathing technique, which allows him to create continuous, long tones, often leading to polyphonic illusions. In 1990, he participated as a soloist in the Total Music Meeting in Berlin organized by FMP alongside musicians such as Steve Lacy and Lindsay Cooper. A year later, he initiated a collaboration with German percussionist Gunther Sommer and double bassist Peter Kowald, reviving one of the historic duos of European free jazz. In 2000, The Wire magazine ranked him among the leading solo saxophone players.

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Taupe’s latest album release, waxing | waning out nowPlay

Taupe’s latest album release, waxing | waning out now

Taupe’s latest album release, waxing | waning delivers jazz experimentalism, ‘skronk’, avant-rock, and electronics, by the Glasgow-based trio, due out now on Minority Records. Across its seven tracks, waxing | waning captures Taupe’s approach – bold and boundarypushing – shaped by a fresh shift in the band’s dynamic and compositional approach.

Taupe’s waxing | waning, co-composed and realised by its players in a studio that was once an undertaker’s premises in Glasgow, is an absolutely affirmative album, an act of cultural defiance in desperate times.

Comprising Mike Parr-Burman (guitar, bass guitar, electronics), Jamie Stockbridge (alto and baritone saxophones) and Alex Palmer (drum kit, percussion), Taupe work up a storm of skronk, free jazz and harmolodic frenzy whose closest relations include Zu, Melt Banana and John Zorn. However, waxing | waning is from its opening, stuttering blasts, an exercise in seeking out and claiming new territory, finding unique and novel permutations in which jazz, rock, electronics interbreed at breakneck pace. Here is a group determined to say and do things they don’t get to say and do elsewhere in their musical lives.

Taupe are a Glasgow-based trio whose free(math)avant(skronk) concoctions fuse sour sonics, effervescent improvisation and sludgy, doom-laden riffage into a sound both unruly and sharply honed. Often seeming to operate by a kind of spooky telekinesis, they pivot from turbulent, unwieldy chaos into taut, metronomic precision, cultivating an approach that feels both volatile and vividly alive. Steeped in a DIY ethos, Taupe balance wonky charm with exacting focus, bridging the no-wave disorder of DNA or James Chance with the squeaky-clean intricacy of groups like goat (jp) and Horse Lords, all while maintaining an anarchic spirit that takes any pretensions out to the woodshed.

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Taupe Unleash “Lemonade Tycoon,”  a Frenetic New Single Ahead of Third AlbumPlay

Taupe Unleash “Lemonade Tycoon,” a Frenetic New Single Ahead of Third Album

Experimental trio Taupe erupt onto the sonic landscape with their new single “Lemonade Tycoon”, out 13 November 2025. The single offers a tantalizing glimpse of Taupe’s third album, waxing | waning, set for release on 6 March 2026 via Czech label Minority Records.

Lemonade Tycoon nods playfully to the classic business simulation game of the same name while forging a sound wholly its own. Its final sequence, a live drum improvisation captured via a saxophone clip-on mic and routed through saxophonist Jamie Stockbridge’s intricate effects pedal chain, creates a spectral echo, sparkling and chaotic like shaken lemonade, simultaneously precise and unruly.

Taupe’s concoction of free(math)avant(skronk) moves fluidly between sour sonics, effervescent improvisations, and sludgy, doom-laden riffs. The trio wields an almost spooky telekinesis, pivoting from taut, metronomic precision to turbulent chaos with effortless grace. Ever-informed by a DIY ethos, their music carries a wonky charm, bridging the nostalgic disorder of no-wave icons like DNA and James Chance with the squeaky-clean precision of contemporary experimentalists such as Goat (JP) and Horse Lords (USA). Live, their performances rumble with a fun, anarchic spirit, discarding pretension and self-seriousness in favor of kinetic, immersive sound.

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Unique boxset Politique du silence by Sylvain Chauveau

Unique boxset Politique du silence by Sylvain Chauveau

Minority Records is releasing a unique boxset Politique du silence with three early albums from Sylvain Chauveau, French composer of minimalist neoclassical music.

“When I made my first albums as a composer, I was obsessed with minimalism, and this quote from the film director Robert Bresson summed up my state of mind. I set myself three principles: 1) Use silence as a starting point, 2) Only add sound when it's absolutely essential, 3) Don't imitate the Anglo-Saxon musicians I admired, but draw on the musical culture of my country, France which lead me to listen intensively to Satie, Debussy and Ravel.” Chauveau explains the background to his work.

The collection Politique du silence contains the recordings of Des plumes dans la tête (2004), Un autre Décembre (2003) and Nocturne impalpable (2001) on coloured 180 gram vinyls. The cover features artwork by French photographer Valéry Lorenzo.

“When I discovered the simple and powerful black and white pictures by Valéry Lorenzo, in the 90s, I immediately fell in love with them. We became good friends and since then I ask him to let me use one of his photos for most of my album covers, or to make my portrait for press shots. It has become a real collaboration, music and images, for more than 25 years. It was then logical to ask him again for the cover of this boxset, like a gentle reflection on my piano and strings era.It's a true honor for me to see my early music recollected, repackaged, remastered after all this time. Which gives me hope that this music, in which I've put all my soul and heart during the years 2001 to 2003, is maybe not forgotten yet.” Chauveau himself adds of his collaboration with Valéry Lorenzo.

The boxset Politique du silence is being released in two editions: a standard version and a limited version of 50 accompanied by a numbered and signed large-format photograph by Valéry Lorenzo. The limited edition will be available only through the Minority Records e-shop.

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Manon Meurt's new album finally releasedPlay

Manon Meurt's new album finally released

Intricate structures with an intertwining of spontaneity and randomness, meeting the diverse genre influences of the band members from medieval music to shoegaze to noise. That is Unravel, the new album, and first in six years, from Czech band Manon Meurt.

"Unravel reflects the different stages of dissociation, a person's thoughts, observations - whether of the environment or of oneself - and admiration for the beauty and cruelty that nature mirrors," multi-instrumentalist and lyricist Kateřina Elznicová says of the album.

Produced by Eddie Steven’s (Freakpower, Zero 7, Moloko, Róisín Murphy) the album was pieced together from recorded fragments, meticulously pieced together. The title Unravel refers to the development of the band, unravelling what they are to find the full potential of their music as well as uncovering the layered nature of the songs and emotions.

The combination of industrial material with plant motifs in the work Untitled_1 by Ukrainian artist Liza Libenko, which adorns the cover of Unravel, strongly attracted the band. After all, floral motifs have always been close to Manon Meurt's music. Libenko, a student of the Academy of Fine Arts and a finalist of the prestigious Austrian Strabag Artaward International Prize, has recently been working on overcoming the narrative boundaries of the canvas, the paintings "attack" the viewer. Sunflowers are a powerful symbol of life and the sun; in Libenko's paintings they are black and burnt, serving as an allegory for contemporary conditions. The work was photographed by photographer and artist Marcel Rozhoň, and the final processing of the Unravel album was done by graphic artist Zuzana Malá.

The album Unravel is released right now on all streaming platforms, CD and 180 gram LP in two colour variants.

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